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In addition to MrSpadge's remarks, a 6TB drive -- all else being equal -- will have higher areal density, which will improve performance. More data passes under the reading head per rotation, so the reading head will generally be able to read more and move less.
Whether you will notice is another matter.

I've used WD Green's in a number of RAID arrays and was not impressed. While most or all consumer drives now lack *TLER, WD Green drives seem to be particularly apt to drop off of the array.
This is based on only three arrays though, a total of maybe 20-30 drives, which is not a very large sample size.
Note that the generations involved were the EARS and the model previous to that.

Samsung has made desktop drives for a long time, but they were never as common as other brands. My server has 8 running now. An early prolific SR forum user who ran a computer company in Red Hill, Australia swore by Samsung drives and insisted they were the most reliable brand around. Unlike most people with opinions on drive brands, he had some real numbers to back up his claims. If only Samsung made TVs and phones with that attention to quality.

Are hard drives closing in on their pre-flood prices?
This portable is down to within 20% of the price I paid before the flooding in Thailand.
This 5400RPM Hitachi has a little more catching up to do with the (not directly comparable) $79 I paid for a bunch of Samsung F4's in 2010, but it's getting close.
Both of these drives are on sale (USD$99 and $109 respectively) with coupons. Coupons often help reflect something close to the real dealer cost, especially for a business like Newegg which maintains razor-thin margins and has the buying power to negotiate with suppliers.
These prices are still high, but a far cry for the 2x-3x cost we were looking at not long ago.
Perhaps the prediction that the worst is yet to come is overstated.

I ran some simple benchmarks (HDTach) and found the drives were in line with those online, but I didn't save them. It seems no longer interested in running on individual drives. In any case, I figure it's an issue of poorly matched drives. I just wish I understood exactly how the mismatch works. Once drives become affordable again, I'll get a different matched set and see how it goes.

I have a RAID 0 array consisting of a 2TB WD Caviar Green EARS and a Samsung F4 2TB.
I know the characteristics of RAID0. I use this array for linear processing of large files, and loss of the array would be a short-term annoyance at worst. This is a legitimate use case for RAID 0.
I get about 125MB/sec copying a file from the array to a RAM drive. This, you know, sucks. I should get ~2 * (slowest drive's STR) - (file system overhead) - (small striping overhead). 160-180MB/sec average?
I noticed that when doing somewhat heavy I/O (4-8 concurrent transfers) the queue depth reported by Windows Resource Monitor is much higher for one drive than the other. When just copying, the busy time is rather higher (~90% vs ~65%) on the same drive.
Both are "power-saver" drives, but because even the difference between a WD Green and a WD Black is fairly minimal, I would be surprised of the gap between these two is so large.
It seems like either:
One drive is terribly slow.
Windows software RAID has a performance issue (not likely, RAID 0 is pretty simple).
Some sort of syncing, vibration, or other issue exists.
Something else?
The question is: What is the most likely cause?
Windows 7 x64 -- Cougar Point chipset (fixed version) -- both in Intel SATA 3Gb ports -- R/W caching on

Thank you for the link. Even if Netgear stuff needs to be power cycled occasionally, that's not that big of a deal to me (though that may only be the case with certain models, rarely is a manufacturer's entire line based on the same hardware). I haven't used, or in fact heard of, their Pro line.

That's been my experience with Netgear equipment. For example, a school I worked for had 48-port Netgear switches which needed to be power cycled every so often. They weren't even under load, though the cycling was needed less often than every few days.

I was surprised to have written "only" 7TB. I've had an Intel G2 160GB since right after release, and have used it for a lot of movie and music processing, and the Intel SSD Toolkit still says I have 100% life left. Maybe I'll leave it to my grandkids one day.

Hello SR,
I haven't been around since Eugene handed the keys to Brian. Quite a few new faces here, and Brian seems to be remarkably active in the forums.
I have a question:
Can anyone recommend a reasonable quality network switch which supports link aggregation (AKA teaming/shotgunning, etc.)?
I have a home storage server which can reach a little over 700MB/sec locally, but network bandwidth is constrained to about 1/7 of that. I was going to get a 10Gbit switch and cards, but I thought I'd save money so instead got a 3-pack of diamond-encrusted Ferraris.
Server and desktop already have dual Intel Gbit NICs, so only the switch remains.
Edit: Please move to the networking forum, which I didn't notice until after posting.

RAID5 performance depends greatly on the RAID card (in this case, Intel's "Matrix"), but in general, RAID5 is very slow for disk writes.
RAID 0+1 would actually be more redundant (that is, you are less likely to lose data) than RAID5, and would likely be faster.
RAID 1+0 is generally thought of to be better than 0+1 because the likelihood of data loss is smaller still.
Out of those choices, I would choose RAID 1+0, however,
You are likely to get even better overall performance, depending on how you use your system, by setting up TWO arrays of RAID1. This would give you excellent redundancy and you could split the load between the arrays. For example, the operating system and related files could go on one array, applications/games on the other.
There are certain situations where RAID 1+0 is faster than 2x RAID 1 (and even where RAID5 is faster than all of the above), but these tend to be special cases such as the editing of single streams of uncompressed HD video.
The main disadvantage of RAID 1, whether in several separate arrays or in a 1+0 array, is loss of usable space, but if you have only 30GB or so of data, who cares?
Finally, other options to consider might be using one drive (or array) as a backup, keeping copies of your data (perhaps incremental backups). Four separate drives is reasonable as well, since RAID is more about uptime than about data security (assuming you make backups of data).
--Charles Burns

"The true test of a man or woman's breeding is how they behave in a quarrel." --George Bernard Shaw
I'm a bit surprised by the posts by SmoothDrRod and imsabbel. Everyone has a bad day sometimes, but seriously.
I'm also surprised at the length of time it took to move from 750 to 1TB, and most manufacturers haven't even moved to 750! I think that more customers are interested in performance and reliability than size. I can easily use a few TB, but most people never fill their mainstream 80GB drives.

Talk about marriage, with a serious tone. Talk about your future together, and moving-in. Say something like "I never understood why people find it so important to shower EVERY day. If I don't sweat, I tend to go about a week without a shower without complaints."